Sion Sono Strange Circus Drama • 2005 • 1h 48m

Gozo is a powerful man; his speeches often appear on television, where he gives advice on good and evil, on what is right and what is not.

Since the age of 12, he has sexually abused his daughter Mitzuko and has also locked her in the case of a cello, where he has drilled a hole so she can witness his sexual encounters with her mother. He is a man completely driven by sexual compulsion and he will not hesitate to reveal to his wife the daughter he is observing, leading both of them to assume the roles of active and passive, but reversed.

"I have been condemned to death since birth, or perhaps my mother was condemned when she brought me into this world," Mitzuko repeated these words like a chant. These words will serve as the guiding thread of the film and will lead to the final outcome and explanation.

Mitzuko repeatedly stated that after being raped by her father, she no longer felt her body, as if her legs had been amputated. One day, during a violent argument, Mitsuko pushes her mother down the stairs and kills her. Immediately after, the girl begins to behave and think like her mother, until she attempts suicide by jumping off a terrace. Mitsuko is saved but is left confined to a wheelchair.

At a certain point, everything seems to reveal itself not as a true story but simply as the fantastic tale of a narrator. A new character emerges, the writer Taeko, who has a great admirer, a young androgynous person who becomes her assistant. A series of flashbacks, twists, and role changes will lead the viewer to have to change their perception of the story, culminating in a disturbing, perfectly constructed, and absolutely convincing outcome.

This thriller film cannot be recounted without revealing and contaminating the developments of the surprising screenplay. It opens and closes with a visionary circus interlude.

"Strange Circus" is a strange combination of horror and innocence, bestiality and grace, metaphorically represented by the circus, a show of contrasts that range from great entertainment to extreme melancholy. The red of the walls has the color of blood flowing on the bodies of women. The music, composed by Sono himself, blends classical pieces, harpsichord music, and circus tunes.

It is never virtue but always vice that tells us who a person is... and as Bernard de Mandeville said, "Neither social qualities nor benevolent affections, which are natural to humans, nor real virtues that he is capable of acquiring through reason and self-denial, are the foundation of society. Instead, what we call EVIL in this world, moral or natural evil, is the great principle that makes us social creatures, the solid base, the life and support of all trades and employments without exception." Consequently, if evil were to cease, society would move towards dissolution. This reasoning is plausible because the tendency for luxury increases consumption, leading to an increase in trade and human activities. Since virtue essentially consists of renouncing luxury, it is directly opposed to the "well-being" of capitalism and the "development" of civil society.

In this case, true luxury is granting oneself the vision of this strange circus that represents our world, superbly narrated through grotesque, extreme, disturbing, and claustrophobic iconography. It is a sublime chromaticism from which the pleasure and pain of the evil of an ideology in service of anthropological deformation emanate.

One can only wonder what cinema can still achieve after Sion Sono...